Now that Gena and I are back together again, it’s time to hit the road. She doesn’t travel with me on all my trips, but since she needed to leave Indonesia anyway to submit for her new visa, it made sense for her to travel with me to Hong Kong.
So we departed Kuala Lumpur on Monday for Hong Kong. We arrived safely. En route, we were informed there was a problem submitting her visa application and they would try again the next day. C’est la vie, as they say in a very different part of the world.
Tuesday we were informed there was still a problem with the application. Actually, it isn’t the application that appears to be the issue, but rather an issue with the Indonesian visa application system. Our visa agency said they had someone going to Jakarta the next day who would try and resolve the issue. That was a relief.
In the meantime, we headed from Hong Kong to Macau to visit with our friend and co-worker Michael Wu. We enjoyed a nice lunch together and caught up on things since my last visit in July. There are two ways to get to Macau from Hong Kong. One is to take a bus, but that requires that you first go from Hong Kong proper to the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), where you can then take a bus that will take you by bridge over the water to Macau. Both Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative regions of China, due to their former colonial status. This special designation means that, while they are certainly part of China, things work a bit differently in the SARs than elsewhere in China. One of the nice things is that US citizens don’t need a visa to enter Hong Kong or Macau – or to travel between them. The bus is the more economical way to travel back and forth between Hong Kong and Macau, but it is much slower, and adds considerable time to the trip.
The alternative is to travel by ferry. This is pricier, but faster. Whether by bus or ferry you exit Hong Kong through an immigration agent, and pass through immigration again on the Macau side. When you return, the process is reversed. But the process is much quicker than it is when you go through immigration at HKIA.
So the entire time for our visit to Macau was almost eight hours, including our visit with Michael. It was good to see him again and the good work he does in Macau with the Lutheran Church Hong Kong Synod (LCHKS).
